My Church, Your Cult

The front page of today's Boston Herald contains a startling bit of religious bigotry that
surely would not have made it past the editors had it been referring to a
church other than Scientology: “Dollars For ‘Cult’ Scholars,” screamed the
headline. “Hub charity gives $20G to proposed Scientology-linked school.”

What
happened was that the “Cornerstone for Success Academy,” described in Dave
Wedge’s sensationalistic story as “a proposed taxpayer-funded pilot school linked
to an arm of the controversial Church of Scientology,” was given a modest grant
by the Boston Foundation, a highly-reputed Hub private charity. Richard
Stutman, President of the Boston Teachers Union – which is opposed to pilot
schools generally because they outshine the public schools that are hobbled by
the infamously dysfunctional BTU contract – obliged by charging that “The
Boston Foundation obviously didn’t pay careful attention towho [sic] they gave the planning grants to
[sic].”

Naturally,
the educational authorities will investigate any applicant that wants to start
a charter school. Religiously-linked groups are not excludable per se, as long
as the school will be operated along secular, not religious, lines. This would
be so regardless of whether it’s a Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Scientology,
Mormon or any other group to which a proposed pilot school mightbe linked. And indeed a spokeswoman for
Applied Scholastics, sponsor of the school, recognized this when she told the Herald that “our organization is a
secular organization” and that there is no “religious material in our
programs.”

But what is disturbing about the Herald’s report is the treatment of
Scientology as a “cult.” Consider the reaction if the paper had referred in
this derogatory manner to, for example, the Mormon Church to which our former
governor – and Presidential primary candidate – Mitt Romney belongs. And, of
course, there’s no reason why an even larger religious denomination could not
be referred to as a cult by those who find its practices mystifying or
unpleasant. To a non-member or a non-believer, any church has practices and
beliefs that could be described as cultish. (Disclosure: Some years ago I
represented the Church of Scientology of Boston
in defending, on First Amendment religious liberty grounds, against lawsuits
seeking money damages for “religious fraud.”) The notion that one’s own belief
is the only true belief, and that all others are fools, apostates, or cultists,
is a very dangerous one, ending, historically, in the cemetery. That such
intolerance graces the front page of one of Boston’s daily newspapers is disturbing.